<<I sincerely believe that we are now beyond the point of no return..... >>
You know, Yogi, there was a time when, if someone had called me a "moderate," I would have smacked him with my glove and demanded satisfaction. I was an idealogue's idealogue. I used to think I needed to protect the purity of my beliefs because conceding anything would just push the world further down that slippery slope to the point of no return. What changed me was mainly longevity. Societal patterns may seem to go only in one direction because the cycles go on so long, but pendulums do swing back. If you live long enough--I have a few years on you--you start to see it.
The first time I recognized a pendulum swing was just after Reagan's election. I was a daily reader of the Washington Post, including the letters to the editor. For years and years, letters seemed to follow a formula. First the writer would state some problem. Then the writer would go on for a couple of paragraphs about why the problem needed to be fixed. Lastly, the writer would close with the suggestion or demand that the Federal government do something about it. It was always the same. Letter after letter. It was making me crazy. Didn't it ever occur to anyone that there were other vehicles for solving problems? Since I was so conscious of this formula, it was very conspicuous to me when the letters changed. Within a few months of Reagan's election, they were gone. And they didn't come back. The pendulum had swung. No longer was every problem the exclusive province of the Federal government. Now you see new government programs only rarely, at least not big ones. Hillary tried it with health care and you saw what happened to her ideas. It's over, for this cycle, anyway. Now that I realize that pendulums do, in fact, swing, I see them all the time.
<<Yet, I still do some things here and there to try and turn "Titanic America" around, but it's still going to hit the proverbial iceberg in my opinion. >>
I don't know how much you and I would agree on which things are going in the wrong direction. I can think of lots of things that have changed for the better, IMO, over my lifetime. I can remember when women didn't leave the house without a hat and gloves. What a waste of life energy, let alone closet space! Now I don't even own a dress and certainly not an iron. Boy was this country up-tight in the 50's! When I was a girl, I wasted too much of my life fooling with my hair and my make-up. Now girls and young women play sports hard, just like the boys, and don't worry if their hair is mussed. That's surely an improvement.
There are lots of other things that make me sad and a few that make me crazy. I hate the way people bring children into the world when they're not equipped to care for them. I hate the deterioration of civility. People don't even know how to walk down a sidewalk anymore. A pair will be coming towards me side by side taking up the whole walk and it never occurs to them to move over and walk single file as they pass someone. Oblivious. I can remember when people never locked their doors. And then there's the general crudity in art, dress, speech. Don't get me started.
The point is that things change. The change is usually glacial and the pendulum overshoots its mark before there is a critical mass of people to change the direction back, so it looks like we're about to go off a cliff, but change happens. You or I can't make it happen. We're just small cogs in the system. Things change when they're good and ready. I've come to realize that leaders don't get others to follow their new ideas, they ride the wave of an idea whose time has come. Everything in its season. We just need to do what we can as individuals to be part of the solution instead of part of the problem and to work collaboratively with others to move things along.
We also need to be sure that we're pushing for the right things by reevaluating our premises, being sure we have all the information, checking our facts, listening to the perspectives of others, and not sweating the small stuff.
One of the things that makes me crazy is that native English speakers can no longer speak English. When supposedly educated people, such as TV announcers and personalities use "myself" promiscuously or don't know the difference between "that" and "which," I cringe. Would you believe that most Federal statutes fail to use that and which correctly, changing the meaning of laws? Sheesh! So is that worth getting exercised over. Probably not. The purpose of language is to communicate. When people misuse myself, that, and which, I almost always know what they mean. They're communicating, albeit inelegantly. So I'm trying to disabuse myself of caring so much about this. This is small stuff. Too many people get too exercised over small stuff.
Before you give up on everything and everybody, give things another look.
Karen
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